Napster on Linux: From a Whisper to a Scream

Why Music Fans Should Embrace Napster

March 20, 2000

By
Kevin Reichard

If anyone needs more convincing that Internet time is a quantum leap past
ordinary time, just check out the rapid growth of
Napster among computer users of all
stripes. Napster is an application that searches for MP3 files across the
Internet and transfers songs or albums from one user to another, and there's
almost half a million Napster users offering songs via the Internet. Both users
need to be using Napster, but there's no intervening server that stores the MP3
files: all files are stored locally, and technically it's one user lending a
personal copy of a song to another user, akin to making a mix tape or CD for a
friend.

Yes, it's probably illegal as hell: there's no way someone could interpret a
personal license to any intellectual property and stretch it to the point where
they're allowed to give away copies on the Internet to anyone for the asking.
But the music industry, which has aggressively pursued legal action against
Internet bootleg sites, now faces the daunting task of going after one user at
a time.

Napster comes at a time when there's a wide gap between music lovers, which
want a wide selection of music available for download and has shown an
inclination to pay for it, and the music industry, which is stuck in the Dark
Ages when it comes to copyright protections. Because of music-industry
lawsuits, MP3 hasn't yet taken off as the
dominant audio format on the Internet: since few major music labels release
more than a teaser song in the MP3 format and have actively pursued legal
action against MP3 through industry groups, most of what's released in the MP3
format has been unsigned bands who release their songs free of charge via the
Internet.

Napster, however, changes the rules. MP3 sites get into trouble because they
store MP3 files on a centralized server and are thus an easy target for
music-industry investigators. With Napster, only the location of the file is
stored on a server, akin to a chat or ICQ server. Napster plays middleman, but
the two participants actually perform the transaction.

As a result, Napster users are posting MP3-format songs for the asking.
Napster succeeds because the music industry has been so focused on margins and
control that they've lost sight of the fact that consumers have the ultimate
control of the music. Bootlegs have a long and proud history among music fans:
I can remember attending a Beatles convention in 1979 as a college freshman and
being awed by the sea of bootlegs openly sold to an adoring public. In many
cases, bootlegs were superior to the crud being put out by the major labels:
John Lennon's wistful, original recording of
Strawberry
Fields Forever (which later resurfaced on The Beatles Anthology) was
clearly superior to the official version, while live bootlegs from
Elvis Costello and
Bruce Springsteen showed a
passion that was sometimes lacking in the more antiseptic studio releases. And
let's face it: without bootlegs, the Grateful Deal and Phish would be playing
the blues in some dumpy bar in South San Francisco. Indeed, with the band's
official support of sharing performances, it could be argued that the real
source of everything Open Source is the Grateful Dead.

This bootleg era should have taught the music industry some lessons.
Passionate fans would purchase anything by their favorite musicians, so that
limiting musicians to yearly releases (which was done for retailing reasons,
not artistic reasons) artificially dampened the market. Bootlegs served as
advertisements for musicians: once you were exposed to the musician, many
people would go out and purchase an album. Sure, there would be folks who
abused the system and acquired all of their music through bootlegs, but these
people weren't going to pony up for major-label releases anyway.

And that's why musicians are so heartened by Napster and the unprecedented
openness in the music world. Most musicians are smart enough to realize that
fans are won through exposure to the actual music. Yes, shrewd marketers can
yield one-album wonders (ice, ice, baby!) but
career musicians know that a steady stream of releases, combined with live
performances, can make for a long-lasting and lucrative career.